It's a Wonderful Life

Merry late Christmas everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful experience with your families, friends, and whoever you were with. And if you were alone for some reason, I hope you enjoyed some really quality time by yourself and with God! We all need those experiences. I know for sure that I enjoyed Christmas very much. To be completely honest though, it was hard on me to be so far from my family in a time where I've literally never been apart from them. It was hard not to constantly think of all the memories and the traditions that I so wish I was taking part in. But, I learned very quickly, that regardless of where I am and what I'm doing, Christmas can still be a wonderful experience. Because of the lack of things I was used to, I was able to focus almost entirely upon my Savior and the true meaning of Christmas through the service we did. Though we were given most of Christmas day off if we desired, my companion and I decided we would visit a member to help her out and then afterwards we even ended up helping our branch president deliver gifts. It is definitely a day I will always remember and appreciate. 

Something else that was quite strange for me was that Christmas is not a big deal here really at all. On Christmas we would walk around telling everyone "gezuar krishtlindjet!" And they would just respond with a simple half-hearted "oh gezuar". It literally just was a regular day to the Albanians which was quite weird haha. Over here in Eastern Europe the big holiday is new years so not many people celebrate Christmas very much (not to mention its a Muslim country and they don't worship Jesus Christ haha). So, with that in mind I'm kinda hyped for the new year because I'm sure it'll be quite different. 

We did some really good work this week. We were able to buckle down and visit quite a few members, several of which were less active. I am putting my best effort into really connecting with this branch to help revive it a little bit. It's definitely kind of dried up with the average attendance of 25-30 people in church when we have 300 members. All of the strong members here get all nostalgic on us talking about how many people used to come every Sunday and how close everyone was. Things have definitely changed due to people moving, not liking someone in church (this happens so much here it's crazy), not feeling like they belong, not having a testimony, etc. There are definitely a lot of reasons for an inactive branch, but overall we are trying to bring back a stronger sense of family. Truly church on Sunday is a place to come for comradery and nourishment after a long week. It's a place to rejoice in each other's success and to comfort in each other's loss. This is what we are trying to encourage. We just pray the branch can begin to grow a little greener. 

We also got another exchange in this week. I got to spend a day in Fier with my good ol Elder Qose. I love that guy. He is an absolute beast and I've learned a ton from him. He's definitely someone who has impacted me forever through his example and his teachings. It was a good day down there too and we did some great work together. On top of that, we also made yet another video for our Adriatic South Mission variety show which I will not spoil in this moment since I know that some of our missionaries have access to this email. However, it was a great time. Definitely another one of those experiences I will never forget to say the least. 

On the topic of the title, I have two things. First off, because my mission president is awesome, we were allowed to watch "It's a wonderful life" on Sunday. Such a good movie with such a great message. On a similar note, I have been feeling a lot of appreciation for life myself. Life is rarely what we expect it to be, but it truly is wonderful. There are miracles all around us. It's been important for me to try and remember the big picture - God's great work on earth - and that he is in the little details that likely will never be known until the work is done. I'd like to invite you all to try and be a little more grateful for your wonderful life this week and this coming year. We are so lucky to be alive. 

Also I got some great new drip today in Tirana. Check out my Northface Gucci collab Hoodie that I snagged for 20$ in the photos. Albania exclusive.

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Car Pune, Sickness, and Throwing a Party

Hello, and welcome back to the Monday morning talk show. Our exclusive Albanian based channel is the only place where you can get an experience completely and solely focused on the missionary efforts of the one and only Elder Millsap while he works to become a better person and serve the people of Elbasan, Albania. 

As you will see by the upcoming footage, this week was a slower one for our dear Elder. He spent quite a lot of time working on the little tasks that had piled up over the last long while with other missionaries. One thing of importance, is that our Elbasan elders were asked to help prepare the Elbasan chapel for a large Christmas gathering that was had on Saturday. Any attempts to decorate the church for the party were thwarted during the week by some deep cleaning workers that were there. Therefore, any decorating did not happen until late Friday afternoon, a mere 24 hours before this said party would begin. Regardless, our fearless elders did what they could including cutting out snowflakes, taping tinsel above doors, figuring out how to make a Christmas tree stay upright on a broken stand (a special thank you to sisters Green and Smith there), and overall having a lack of materials to decorate with to add to the challenge. The decorating finished approximately an hour and a half before the party, and the elders then immediately began to set up the building for hosting a large number of individuals from the many branches of South Albania. This happened to include making 3 giant pots of hot chocolate from scratch, but this time, they had the help of the assistants to the president which made the experience quite a bit more enjoyable for our Elder Millsap. Against all odds, the Christmas party was a slam dunk success that many people enjoyed. All went well and when everyone left, the elders of Elbasan were left to clean everything up. 

Another highlight of Elder Millsaps week was their journeyings to Tirana and back. Due to transfers and some repairs being made to the car they use, the elders of Elbasan dropped their vehicle off in the shop on Tuesday, got dropped off without their car the same day in Elbasan, and then took a bus up to Tirana the old fashioned way on Thursday to retrieve it. To make the experience even more enjoyable Elder Rowley decided it would be a great idea to catch a very bad cold. This in turn meant that they spent most of their days of Wednesday and Thursday at home so that Elder Rowley could recover. But, on the bright side, Elder Millsap was able to get in some great practice on a guitar he had inherited from the one and only Elder Garrett when he finished his mission and made the long journey home early in the week. Elder Millsap has enjoyed this guitar quite a lot and hopes to improve greatly in his skills over the course of his mission. 

That's about all folks! Our staff here at Monday morning talk show would like to wish all of you and your families a very merry Christmas this week! Tune in next week to hear how Christmas is in the Adriatic South Mission and enjoy the footage featured below!

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Segregation and Translation

 To start off here is a haiku I wrote in Albanian when I was super bored waiting for a member to finish training herself on our computer at the teaching center (kind of a weird long story that I won't get into)

Dje ishte mësim 

Nesër ka ëndrrat tona

Sot është mrekulli

What a great week it was. It had quite a lot of variety which spiced things up for us real nice. Lots of good lessons came from all sources with little and big miracles sprinkled throughout. Very grateful. 

I mentioned this briefly last week, but we had an exchange in Pogradec on Wednesday! That was a fun experience to say the least. There *cough* were 4 Elders there and they are a force of nature. They are easily so of my favorite missionaries out here and they get some great work done. Honestly, I think I learned more from them as their zone leader than they learned from us. It was a great final hoorah for Elde Garret as well. He goes home tomorrow after having served a very successful mission. What an incredible man. He definitely sets the standard high for all of us other missionaries. Anyways, the exchange was awesome. Pogradec is in the mountains on the shore of a big mountain lake called Lake Ohrid. It kinda gave me bear lake vibes actually not gonna lie. Because of this, it was quite cold in Pogradec. They didn't have snow when we were over there, but I think they might now. It is one of the few areas in the mission that consistently gets snow throughout the mission. Super hype because snow is the best. Another fun fact about Pogradec: tons of people use wood burning stoves to heat their homes so come 4 o clock or so when it starts getting dark, the smoke in the city is so thick you can see it everywhere. The smell made me miss camping a little bit too... Very good stuff. To wrap up our exchange in the evening, we played a great game of Catan so you can know it was a super fire exchange for sure. 

After getting back from Pogi, we needed to do some work to renew our car registration. It ended up becoming quite the hassle because neither I or elder Rowley knew what was going on at all. Anyways, while we were doing this car work, this young kid comes up to me and starts begging for money. Being used to this, I ignored his question and started some basic small talk with the kid. Within just a couple minutes we were basically best friends. He brought over his other friend (who initially asked for money as well) and introduced him to us. As we were walking back to our car as well, these kids ran up to us and asked us if they could show us a church that was nearby (since we had mentioned we were volunteers for our church). Being pressed on time I was hesitant to say anything, but eventually I agreed and we followed them down into a really ghetto and poor neighborhood. They showed us their church, which turned out to be protestant, and got barked at by a dog when the kid tried to open the church gate. Well, right next to this church lives this nice family with like 5 kids or something (that's very significant in albania). We started talking to these super cool kids and I also talked to who I believe was their mother. All of them were very friendly and told me that the church was shume keq and not good at all. We talked to them for a while explaining our church and everything and why we were so far from our families and all that, and eventually realized we needed to get moving so we promised to return one day to visit. Hopefully we can find time for that visit sometime this week because God for sure led us to them through the beggar kids. 

Sad news: our sisters are being taken from us and Elder Rowley and I will be left alone to manage the city of Elbasan. Transfer calls came in again on Friday since we've got quite a few missionaries going home this coming week and to everyone's surprise, they separated all of the elders and sisters into different areas. Our mission seems to have a reputation for missionaries falling in love for some reason so that might have something to do with it, but either way, there are now no elder/sister areas. The areas that have multiple companionships now either have 4 sisters or 4 Elders. Pretty hype actually and I hope I can serve in one of these Mega elder areas in the near future. I'm I'm hoping they end up moving Elders into Elbasan because it might prove a little difficult to balance our ZL work with the attention and time our area needs. Another bummer is that there are things that the sisters definitely can do that we can't and they are certainly better than us in a lot of other things so we will have to step up our game big time without them. Updates to come as I continue to try and figure out this area haha. 

Language update: things are looking up but also slightly more stressful. We have a senior couple that's comes to the Elbasan branch and so we as missionaries need to translate for them. Sister Satterthwaite is a legend with the language so she has been translating sacrament meeting and Sunday school for the both of them. Well she is leaving now and therefore elder Rowley and I will have to do it. Elder Rowley will probably take it for the next little while, but when he leaves who knows who will be coming into the area, so I'm guessing the baton will be quickly passed to me. Elder Rowley didn't want to translate yesterday in priesthood so I tried to do so and kind of failed miserably. Poor Elder Booth probably only got 20% of what was said translated for him. Live transcription, as it turns out, is very difficult so I will be working on that a lot in my language studies so that I can do a good job for them in the future. Tune in next transfer to hear from the transcripting legend Elder Millsap (I'm hoping if I say that it'll give me a little extra incentive and that then it will actually be the case here in a month).

Anyways, that's probably about all for now my good friends and family. The only other thing of notice I'd say is the Mega soccer pday we had today. There are a ton of missionaries in Tirana because of transfers and I think we literally had 30-40 missionaries in one place playing soccer/football. Very wild but I don't think I will be getting those pictures because we have some forgetful missionaries in our mission haha. If they happen to be in the album when you open it, that's your treat I guess. 

Merry early Christmas everyone! Enjoy yourselves! Love you all!

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Moving Up In the World?

A pleasure it is to be writing to you all once again. I'm pretty short on time this week so I will keep it nice and brief. 

The main thing to note is that I transferred! I am now serving in Elbasan with Elder Rowley as a zone leader. If you aren't sure what that is, it just means that you are kind of in charge of keeping the zone of missionaries in check, doing trainings, making sure the companionships are doing okay, etc.  It's got a lot of perks for sure. For instance, one thing we get to do is do exchanges with all of the elders in the zone. This means that we are now able to travel to all the far corners of the zone in order to work with different companionships for about a day and Albania is beautiful so that's pretty hype. We should be heading over to Pogradec this week which will be sick. Another perk is that I inherited a really comfortable zone leader robe. Kinda weird but I've grown to really like it. Pictures do feature it. 

This week had some really good stuff as well. I've just been adjusting to the area trying to meet members and stuff, but in the meantime we had a mission tour with Elder De Feo! He is the Europe area president in the church and he taught us some great things. Basically, we had two 2 hour sessions of this mission tour over zoom which basically was just some incredible messages from this guy for multiple hours in total. He talked a lot about how everyone on earth receives unconditional blessings from God because he loves us. But, on the other hand there are conditional blessings we can receive by doing what God asks us. These conditional blessings can be referred to as power. We can receive power to become more and resist the attacks of the adversary when we do what God commands us, and we receive especially great power when we keep the covenants we have made with God as well. It was a great reminder to me that I need to be mindful myself of the covenants (or promises) that I have made to God in my life and particularly in the temple. Remembering what we have promised and keeping those promises can and will give us immense power over our lives and will give us that same power as well the bless the lives of those around us as well! I'd honestly love to just share everything this man said to us in here, but there's no way my writings could portray the significance of the message. Elder De Feo truly is an incredible man though. I am so grateful to have learned from him. 

Something that I love about Elbasan: CHURCH! I got to just sit and enjoy a sacrament meeting and Sunday school for the first time in over 4 months! That is something I truly took for granted and I'm so glad to have it back. It is also great to fully understand everything *usually* said in Albanian in church as well! The gift of tongues is siiiiick.

Okay you guys are the bomb. I promise I'll write a better email next week! Pafshim!

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